Actionable Gamification

by Yu-kai Chou

  Chapter 11: The Seventh Core Drive - Unpredictability & Curiosity

  Unpredictability & Curiosity is the seventh Core Drive in the Octalysis Gamification Framework and is the main force behind our infatuation with experiences that are uncertain and involve chance. As mentioned in earlier chapters, our intellectual consciousness is inherently lazy, and if the tasks at hand do not demand immediate attention, the neocortex delegates the mental legwork to our subconscious mind, or “System 1” according to Economics Nobel Prize winner and psychologist Daniel Kahneman177.

  The intellectual consciousness only wants to be disturbed when it is absolutely necessary, such as when a threat is present or when the brain encounters new information it hasn’t processed before.

  Indeed, Oren Klaff, author of Pitch Anything, states that during meetings, people pay attention to what you say until they can fit you into a pattern that they have previously recognized178. Once they fit you into a recognized pattern, they immediately zone out. Therefore, it is important to give a pitch that continuously serves unexpected and unpredictable information to keep people engaged.

  Coupled with this is our natural curiosity to explore. Exploring the unknown, though dangerous, helped our ancestors adapt to changing environments and discover new resources to survive and thrive. Jesse Schell, game designer and author of Art of Game Design: A book of Lenses, even goes as far as defining the word “fun” as “pleasure with surprises.179” Why is the “surprise” element so important in fun?

  In this chapter, we will explore how this Core Drive of Unpredictability & Curiosity motivates our behavior and how a system designer can effectively incorporate this into their experiences.

  And, Now it’s Fun

  If I told you to play a game, where you continuously press a button and every ten times you press it, you give me $5 - would you play it? The rational reader would not only reject this offer but would feel utterly insulted that I tried to dupe them into playing in the first place. Now what if the terms change, and I told you that out of a hundred people, two people who play this game would win $10 back? You may ponder for a moment, but still reject it. The offer is not as insulting as before though, just not economically attractive.

  But what if I told you that every time you press the button, you may periodically win some money back, and there is an extremely small but possible chance of winning $10,000?

  I can’t exactly predict what my smart rational readers would do in this case, but I do know that every single day millions of people throughout the world play the game I mentioned above. More commonly known as slot machine gambling, players are consistently losing money every time they pull a lever or press a button, but are engaged, even addicted, to the unpredictable chance of winning a lot of money back. With the right risk/reward incentive, the game suddenly becomes so much fun!

  Studies have shown that we are more engaged in an experience when there is the possibility of winning than when we know our odds for certain180. If we know we will receive a reward, our excitement only reflects the emotional value of the reward itself.

  However, when we only have a chance to gain the reward our brains are more engaged by the thrill of whether we will win or not.

  The Core Drive in a Skinner Box

  There’s a substantial amount of research on how the unknown and the unpredictable intrigues and engages our minds. One of the most notable motivational design case studies that explored this phenomenon is the Skinner Box181.

  182

  The Skinner Box was an experiment conducted by the scientist B. F. Skinner, who placed rodents and pigeons in a box with an installed lever. In the first phase, whenever the animal pressed the lever (the Desired Action), a portion of food was released. As long as the animal continuously pressed the lever, food would continue to be dispensed.

  The end result is that when the animal was no longer hungry, it would stop pressing the lever. This makes a lot of sense - the animal is no longer hungry and does not need food anymore.

  The second phase, however, introduced unpredictability into the test mechanics. When the animal pressed the lever, there was no guarantee that food would be dispensed as before. Sometimes food came out, sometimes nothing came out, and sometimes even two pieces of food came out.

  Skinner observed that with these mechanics in place, the animal would constantly press the lever, regardless of whether it was hungry or not. The system was simply “messing” with its brain: “Will it come out? Will it come out? Will it come out?”

  Here we see that satisfying our burning curiosity is intrinsically motivating to our primitive brain, sometimes more so than the extrinsic reward of food. Have you ever seen a person so addicted to gambling that he forgot that he was tired, hungry, or even thirsty?

  I often hear critiques of how the Points, Badges, and Leaderboards in gamification simply turns the world into a large Skinner Box, where people are manipulated to mindlessly doing meaningless tasks. I feel the more profound lesson from the Skinner Box is not that Points and Badges motivate people, but that unpredictable results stemming from Core Drive 7 can drive obsessive behavior.

  Sweepstakes and Raffles

  In Chapter 5 on Epic Meaning & Calling, I mentioned how I started my first business because of a small raffle held at a UCLA barbecue. Raffles are fairly popular because they add an element of “fun” to an event, as people are drawn by the possibility of winning a prize. Most of the time, the “Desired Action” is for people to stay until the end of the event, and therefore the results of the raffle is announced towards the end of the schedule. Though primarily driven by Core Drive 7, these events draw power from Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession (the desire to win a prize), and a bit of CD8: Loss & Avoidance (if I leave too early, I’ll lose my chance to win…).

  As you remember when I first recounted my story, upon drawing my own name out of the hat, I was also hit by a strong sense of Calling (from Core Drive 1), feeling that I was destined to start my own business. My perceived calling compelled me to be persistent in the face of some dark days and difficult challenges throughout my entrepreneurial career. Many times, on the brink of failure, I felt like giving up. But because I believed that I was meant to walk this path, I pressed on and became more convinced that I could persevere in the startup world as a young entrepreneur. As you can see, being “lucky” in a scenario of chance can install a higher sense of mission and purpose. The same goes for the effects of Beginner’s Luck (Game Technique #23), where people who are extremely lucky the first time they do something feel that they are somehow destined to do it.

  As you can see, the power of the raffle is more than the value of any individual reward. Beyond the prize itself (which is extrinsic in nature, stemming from Core Drive 4), the intrinsic motivation behind the “will I be lucky?” thought plays an important role in ensuring people remain engaged with the process.

  On a larger scale, many companies that utilize social media marketing are now successfully deploying techniques such as sweepstakes to engage users with their brand and message. Often, these companies will give out a quest where those who commit the Desired Actions will have a chance to win some promotional prize. Sweepstakes can vary quite a bit. The Desired Actions can be as simple as “liking” the company website on Facebook. An example of such a campaign is Macy’s marketing campaign where “liking” their Facebook profile gave fans a chance to win $500-$1,000 in gift cards183.

  The Desired Actions can also be something more complex, such as Kelloggs’ “The Great Eggo Waffle Off!” challenge, where entrants submitted their best waffle recipes for a chance to win $5,000184. They also utilized Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness by incorporating the Social Treasure game technique into their sweepstakes. The odds of an entrant winning the competition could be based entirely, or at least partially affected, on the community voting. In that way, an added Desired Action of “promoting our brand to all your friends!” comes into effect. This works great for a challenge like The Great Eggo
Waffle Off since users are sending images of guilty-pleasure waffles to their friends, asking them to vote up their submissions. Eye candy works like a charm.

  Some Sweepstakes are theme-based, tying in some Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession or even Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling. Dove applies a theme-based sweepstake that is visually appealing to users. In their “Real Beauty Should Be Shared” contest, Dove asked their fans to share why their friend “represents Real Beauty.”185 Instead of receiving monetary prizes, the winners got to be the new “Faces of Dove” at various stores in the huge local Shoppers Drug Mart Canadian retail chain.

  This was a great design, because the campaign involved photos of beautiful/confident women that attracted attention. It promoted a cause that contestants’ friends could all get behind and support them on, with a prize that appealed to status while giving users a higher sense of ownership.

  Another less-effective example of a theme-based sweepstake is the Father’s Day Clock Giveaway launched by Tires Plus, which used an essay contest asking contestants to write about who they thought qualified as the best dad. Then participants voted for their favorite dad to determine who would ultimately take home a Michelin Man clock186. The good part about the sweepstake’s design was that its theme fit Tires Plus’ target demographic - guys who like cars.

  The slight design flaw in its implementation was that the Desired Action required significant effort. Although they used the same gamification techniques as Dove, the writing and reading of essays is a Desired Action that requires a lot of time and non-car-related effort - just for a simple extrinsic prize. Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance prevented many people from participating. This is known as an Anti Core Drive in my framework, which we will cover in more detail with Chapter 16.

  Some brands decide to double down on Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity by making everything about the sweepstakes unpredictable. Coca-Cola is one of those brands that has been at the forefront of developing creative and innovative product promotions.

  You can often see that Coca-Cola commercials attempt to turn simple acts of drinking carbonated sugar water into a Core Drive 1: Epic meaning and Calling experience through using magical kingdoms, promoting happiness, and friendly polar bears.

  The company launched an especially appealing sweepstakes contest for teenagers in Hong Kong. Users are offered a free app called “Chok.” During each evening, a television commercial will run, asking fans to open the app and shake their phones to catch virtual bottle caps and earn mobile games, discounts, and sweepstakes entries187.

  This prompted users to enthusiastically shake their phones in front of the television screen, hoping for prizes that may or may not pop out. Because the time of the activity, whether one will win or not, and what the winner will get are all unknown, there’s a strong sense of excitement.

  Even in the campaign’s Discovery Phase (where users first decide to try out a product or experience, which works hand-in-hand through marketing and so-called growth hacking), if you are watching TV with a group and you see someone suddenly shake their phone when a commercial comes on, your curiosity will surely be piqued and perhaps compel you to join.

  Coca Cola strategically aligned this campaign with its brand strategy and Chok received 380,000 downloads from Hong Kong users alone within a month of launch. The beverage conglomerate claimed this campaign was their most successful marketing effort in Hong Kong for 35 years.

  A Lucky Day with Lucky Diem

  When I’m not under confidentiality agreements, I love promoting my clients and the work they are doing. Some of my clients work in marketing and hustle to implement good gamification design to significantly improve key marketing metrics for a variety of businesses. One example is the New York Based company LuckyDiem.

  LuckyDiem takes brand promotion marketing to a whole new level by utilizing Unpredictability and Curiosity in concert with other Core Drives. Using a series of game devices such as slots, trivia questions, and wheels of fortune, LuckyDiem’s mobile platform allows any brand to engage their customers and turn their target market into loyal evangelists. Sound like a marketing cliché? The numbers below tell a compelling story.

  On one project, LuckyDiem worked with La Quinta Inns and Suites – an international hotel chain consisting of over 700 properties and franchises – to supercharge their loyalty program through a new gamified campaign called Play & Stay. In a publicly available case study, La Quinta sent out emails to 83,600 potential customers on their email list, promoting the Play & Stay game. Out of the total number of email recipients, 2000 people signed up to the LuckyDiem promotions program, which is a 2.4% email conversion rate. These were fairly average email marketing numbers. No additional promotional effort was conducted afterward.

  The amazing thing is, within a three-month period, those 2000 users eventually led to 10,700 new referral signups, representing a K-Factor188 of 5.3K (or a viral coefficient of 530%). 34% of these users returned every single day and spent an average of 3.75 minutes on the game, creating 23,000 unique user invites, 10,000 new Facebook Likes and 4,500 new Twitter Followers for La Quinta. More importantly, these users turned into customers. 14.1% of the users ended up becoming paying customers, with LuckyDiem’s platform generating 1,784 new bookings for La Quinta, leading to a 712% sales lift against the control group. That’s a tremendous win for any established chain or company that is already extremely successful in their own right.

  How did Lucky Diem do it?

  LuckyDiem first launched with a general slot machine game that most people are very familiar with. Users click the big Spin Button and get a chance of winning points or collectables (remember from Core Drive 2 principles that this button is called a Desert Oasis – a large Win-State action that visually attracts the user to interact with it).

  To play, users needed virtual tokens, which is a good utilization of Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience. Tokens are recharged regularly, with an additional wheel of fortune game that can generate more tokens once the initial supply runs out.

  In addition, there are “instant grand prizes” such as big as “10 Free Nights” that can be won with every spin. The small chance of winning the grand prize did not deter people very much, as the hope of winning a major prize was enough to make the experience fun and addicting. Because the prize was so enticing, people were highly motivated to continue playing, while being assured that their general La Quinta points were accumulating as they played - a combination of Core Drive 2 and Core Drive 4. These techniques are called Lotteries and Rolling Rewards, which we’ll discuss later in the chapter.

  Finally, the reward was dangled in front of the players, including an image of the reward as well as a large action button to redeem it.

  If you have been studying my work, you will know that much of the above is merely the “shell” of a game. Though a fantastic success story, if you simply copied their game devices and mechanics for your own project, you may not experience the same success. The depth of the work is embedded within months of planning, hard-gathered research, and many hours of interface design and balance tweaking.

  In the end, thoughtful design and implementation created a wonderful and engaging user experience that drove strong results for La Quinta. Ariana Arghandewal, a writer for FrugalTravelGuy.com, wrote about La Quinta’s Play & Stay game in an article:

  “Warning: This game is extremely addictive. […] You can win La [Quinta] points, additional spins, tokens that essentially increase your spins, free nights, and more. I initially dismissed this, as I don’t anticipate staying at a La Quinta anytime soon, but this game is highly addictive and I’ve already earned 3,000 points by playing it for the past two days.” 189

  As you can see, even when a person thinks that she doesn’t necessarily care about the prizes, the Human-Focused Design motivated her to play for a lot longer than she intended. As we see from the numbers above, many users like her ended up becoming paying customers.

  Most of my clients like t
o keep the work I do for them confidential. So when I get an opportunity to obtain a public quote with fantastic metrics that are not inflated, I quickly jump on that opportunity (remember the Brag Button game technique?):

  “Yu-kai’s Insights were instrumental in helping LuckyDiem supercharge our client La Quinta’s bookings per user by 206% and incremental revenue per user by $157 (132% Lift) against the control group. Being able to achieve a viral coefficient of 530%, I would recommend any business to work with Yu-kai and learn his Octalysis Framework.” - Andrew Landis, Founder & CEO of LuckyDiem

  In 2015, Lucky Diem decided to use these powerful game design techniques to focus on helping brick-and-mortar businesses engage and retain customers. Soon we will see whether the company can translate the proven model to a new market correctly.

  Suspense and Mystery in a Blender

  Many companies also use Core Drive 7 to promote their brands by adding suspense and mystery to their marketing campaign. One classic example is Blendtec’s Will It Blend? campaign. Blendtec is one of those power blenders that sell for a whooping $300-$400 - about the price of an iPad Mini. Not cheap by any means, but since the value it promises is long-term health and love for your family, people will purchase it if they believe it is notably better than other blenders.